Posts Tagged ‘essential kids’

Did you even know Australia had a Federal Children’s Commissioner? We don’t hear that much from her – so thought we would try to get her attention and involvement on this. Let her know you want her to act by signing the petition today!

Universal Royalty’s Child Beauty Pageant is coming to Melbourne, Australia, despite clear evidence from experts that the practise is detrimental to the normal and healthy development of children.

Child beauty pageants are exploitation. Little girls are made to undergo unnecessary and painful beauty treatments such as waxing, tanning and even botox. They are adorned with make up, high heels, false eyelashes, acrylic nails, flippers (false teeth) and hairpieces. They are primped and styled to look and act like mini-adults, to flirt with the judges and to be sexy and alluring.

The pageants teach girls from a very early age that their worth is based on their appearance. Research shows that reinforcing an emphasis on looks and attractiveness leads to negative body image, disordered eating, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. There are now over a hundred global reports on the issue of sexualisation of children. This research has shown that sexualisation is harmful to children’s cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality and beliefs.

A parliamentary report recently released in Western Australia by WA’s Joint Standing Committee on the Commissioner for Children and Young People called for child beauty pageants to be scrutinised as one of several ways to tackle the sexualisation of children.

Last year France outlawed child beauty pageants for children under 16 to protect them from being prematurely sexualised. Pageant organisers face jail time and substantial fines for harming children in this way.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said: ”Direct participation and competition for a beauty prize where infants and girls are objectified and judged against sexualised ideals can have significant mental health and developmental consequences that impact detrimentally on identity, self-esteem, and body perception.”

Teaching little girls to preen and to strut, to look sexy for the judges, to emphasise sexualised behaviours is totally inappropriate for children. We want better for our girls and call on Megan Mitchell, the National Children’s Commissioner, to publicly condemn and take action to stop the Universal Royalty pageant from coming to Melbourne on August 2nd 2014.

Girls’ anxieties turn to healthy anger when they see they are part of a wider cause, writes Steve Biddulph.

This year, on a multi-country speaking tour for my new book Raising Girls, I talked to thousands of parents of girls. It was an eye-opening experience. For 25 years I’d worked primarily on the challenges of boys. The predominant emotion in that work was sorrow – at how damaged the masculine condition was – how the wars and traumas of the twentieth century had left a generation of men shut down, remote and awkward around their children. It was not unusual to see men and women in those audiences weeping at the damage they had sustained from fathers who were unable to convey their love.

The gatherings with parents of girls, though, have a very different emotional tone. Parents of girls are angry. They see very plainly the exploitation, anxiety creation, and uncaring assaults on young girls both by sexist males, still celebrated in the media, music and sport, and by the corporate world, which by its own admission targetted pre-teen girls deliberately from the mid 1990’s, to sell them products they neither want nor need. The objectification of girls and women was at the heart of the womens’ movement in the 1960’s, and this is no less the case today. Sexism is staging a comeback, media driven and commercially motivated, and it’s the kids who are being hurt the worst.

Researchers such as Richard Eckersley have noted deteriorating mental health among girls worldwide, predominantly anxiety conditions, but manifesting in everything from eating disorders to binge drinking. A shocking one in five girls now suffers a mental health disorder during her growing up years. While most girls are still doing fine, few parents have not heard their daughter say “I hate my body”, or “I hate my life”. The boundaries around our children are down. Home is no longer a haven, the adults are too busy to talk, and advertizing blares from TV’s in every room. Social media holds out the promise of friendship but often delivers cruelty and judgementalness.

Its a paradox that this is happening at a time when girls have never had more scope. They easily outdo boys educationally, and are far more employable. Girls today see that a woman can be a prime minister, but also they see the horrifically sexist way that woman is treated.

Anger is a healthy emotion because it leads to action. There are many things we can do. Our daughters need to know that they are part of a long, and successful struggle, and one which they have to participate in because its gains could so easily be lost. Perhaps the cure for the narcissism of fashion, for paralyzing anxiety over body issues and pleasing boys, might lie in lifting one’s gaze and seeing that this is victimhood, and should not be tolerated. That their problems are linked to those of girls and women right across the globe.

Last month, while the world was discussing Miley Cyrus’s dance routines, an eight year old girl in Yemen died of from internal injuries caused by sexual intercourse on her wedding night. Let me repeat that – an eight year old girl. Its a seamless flow from the poverty that leads from child brides, into child prostitution and trafficking, to abusive pornography, and on to spotty boys in your shopping mall wearing t-shirts with images of women bound and gagged. Its all the same struggle and we can fight it from here.

There needs to be a real uprising in the west against the extraordinary rates of sexual assault, workplace exploitation, and lack of educational opportunity that still characterizes girls lives in the developing world, and is far from defeated at home. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryll Wudunn in their book Half the Sky, document a hundred thousand girls being trafficked into brothels each year in China. Across Asia and Africa, the deliberate neglect of baby girls has led to a gender imbalance, representing the loss of a hundred million lives. In Dubai, a woman will be jailed for BEING raped.

It all starts at home. We have to be wide awake, or we can end up being the vehicles of harm to our own daughters. Three generations of domination by the visual media of television and now the internet have created massive overfocus on how people LOOK. If we talk endlessly about diets, weight and food, we can’t expect our daughters not to catch this disease. In my talks I ask a question of the audience. “Put up your hand if you are unhappy with your own body”. In auditoriums of five hundred people, only two or three don’t put up their hands. “You see”, I tell them “the trouble we are already in?”

How fathers treat daughters is also critical. Showing respect, asking her views, supporting her interests and vocations with generous amounts of your time, simply enjoying her company, sends a message that she has profound worth. Fathers are the first opposite gender relationship a girl has, and set a benchmark which can immunize her from manipulation or misuse by boys.

But most of all, if we can show our girls that they are part of something larger, they soon become activated. A movement is an outbreak of common sense. Of course slavery was wrong. Of course we have to protect the environment. Of course women should be equal. But movements require lots of work, personal and political. Getting involved is in itself liberating, for the fight itself links us together and brings us fully alive. Our daughters need feminism, and it needs them. There’s a world at stake.

Steve Biddulph is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology, and author of Raising Girls,Raising Boys and The New Manhood.

‘The foremost authority in Australia cyber safety lays it on the line and challenges parents to find their digital spine.’ – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

Whether it is problems with friends, worrying about how you look or just feeling a bit down in the dumps – these books are written especially for you – to help you in your journey. Purchase all four together and save $18.50 on postage! Author: Sharon Witt

In this DVD, Melinda takes us on a visual tour of popular culture. “Melinda’s presentation leaves audiences reeling. She delivers her message with a clarity and commonsense without peer.” – Steve Biddulph, author, Raising Boys, Raising Girls

In this easy-to-read updated book, Steve Biddulph shares powerful stories and give practical advice about every aspect of boyhood.

Men of Honour -written by Glen Gerreyn- encourages and inspires young men to take up the challenge to be honourable. Whether at school, in sport, at work or in relationships, we must develp our character to achieve success and experience the thrills life has on offer.

Purchase the Ruby Who? DVD and book together for only $35 saving 10% off the individual price.

“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” – Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist

Do you read women’s lifestyle magazines? Have you thought about how magazines might affect you when you read them? Faking It reflects the body of academic research on magazines, mass media, and the sexual objectification of women.

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Ruby Who? is the sweet and innocent story of a little girl’s adventure in re-discovering her identity. Ruby wishes for so many things and dreams of being like others. Will she end up forgetting how to just be herself?

Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social aversion to less than perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies. It also features women with disabilities who were discouraged from becoming pregnant at all.